There’s lots of good stuff in this podcast with Gary Stager on The Lost Art of Teaching, but I’m particularly glad to see educators talking about and centering obsession. Embrace obsession. Autistic Special Interest and ADHD Hyperfocus crush learning curves when allowed to pursue passion.
Less coercion, more obsession.
Selected quotes:
A teacher’s role, then, should be to create the conditions for obsession to happen.
Gary believes that deep, meaningful learning is often accompanied by obsession, and his focus is on answering the question: How can we create experiences and context in classrooms where kids can discover things they don’t know they love? This is done by implementing good projects that spur creativity, ownership, and relevance.
Through his professional learning conference Constructing Modern Knowledge (CMK), Gary has teachers put on their “learner hats” and learn how to create obsession, since, he says, very few of us have experienced what greatness looks like.
Around the time of Nation at Risk, legislatures all over the world removed the art of teaching from teacher preparation and all they left was curriculum delivery and animal control.
Knowledge is a consequence of experience.
The instruction might not be necessary at all. A good project can replace a great deal of reckless instruction.
Curriculum is so arbitrary and so arrogant.
When it comes to a skill like computer programming, the kids never develop enough fluency to be able to use it to solve real problems.
Curriculum is the most dangerous idea in education.
As we remove agency from teachers, they become less thoughtful in their practice.
The best projects are generative.
Not enough adults have experience with what greatness looks like, feels like, tastes like, sounds like.
Great artists reflect the milieu in which they live.
You can’t possibly be 21st century learners if you haven’t learned anything this century.
I never worry about classroom management because I never go into a classroom feeling like I have to manage it.
Much of the PD we see expects nothing of teachers.
Apparently, everyone needs a good seventh grade social studies teacher.
A great 80 year old pianist said: Nothing needs to be taught, only experienced.
There are folks in every walk of life who understand Piaget. You Go to Latin America or you go to Reggio Emilia and they say, “We get John Dewey better than you get John Dewey.” People who are living these ideas of learning by doing, of valuing expertise, of understanding the importance of an aesthetic…
Source: ML Podcast #42 – The Lost Art of Teaching with Gary Stager – Modern Learners
Embrace the obsession. Special interests are “intimately tied to the well-being of people on the spectrum“. “Special interests have a positive impact on autistic adults and are associated with higher subjective well-being and satisfaction across specific life domains including social contact and leisure.”
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